1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a sewing apparatus and a sewing cartridge. More particularly, the invention relates to a technique that causes a thread to remain in a workpiece by a thread holding force due to the elasticity of the workpiece in order to prevent stitches formed on the workpiece from unraveling.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, a sewing apparatus such as a sewing machine includes a needle that has an upper thread and passes the upper thread into a work cloth, a thread take-up that tightens the upper thread, and a mechanism that drives the needle and the thread take-up. A thread loop that accommodates a lower thread in a bobbin and incorporates with the needle and the thread take-up to form an upper thread loop and interloops the upper thread and the lower thread into each other. A feed dog that feeds the work cloth, and a mechanism that drives the feed dog are also included. A sewing operation is performed by which the work cloth is fed by driving the needle and the thread take-up vertically.
A conventional home-use embroidery machine has an embroidery frame to which a work cloth is attached and a device for moving the embroidery frame in orthogonal directions (an X direction and a Y direction) in a horizontal plane, instead of the feed dog. The sewing operation is performed by which the embroidery frame is independently moved in the X direction and the Y direction, by a controller, based on embroidery data.
When a sewing operation is performed using an upper thread and a lower thread as in a conventional sewing apparatus, the thread loop taker, the driving device for the thread loop taker, and the like are needed. Accordingly, the structure of the conventional sewing apparatus becomes complicated. It is difficult to reduce size and weight of such a sewing apparatus. There has been proposed sewing equipment that performs a sewing operation using only the upper thread. However, the stitches are liable to unravel because the upper thread does not interloop the lower thread. Therefore, the stitches are far from perfect stitches and are not practical. When the sewing operation is performed using only the upper thread, so far, there has been no thought at all of using a work cloth having a special structure that prevents stitches and embroidery patterns from unraveling.
The invention provides a sewing apparatus where sewing is performed by causing a thread to remain in a workpiece. The sewing apparatus includes a needle that moves up and down to pass the thread into the workpiece, a workpiece moving device that relatively moves the workpiece with respect to the needle, and a holding member that holds at least a part of the thread connecting two consecutive stitch points in accordance with the relative movement between the needle and the workpiece.
When sewing is performed on the workpiece, the pressing member holds at least a part of the thread connecting two consecutive stitch points. The needle moves up and down to pass the thread into the workpiece, and the thread remains in the workpiece. Because the pressing member holds the thread, sewing can be performed on the workpiece without use of a lower thread or certain other components of conventional sewing apparatus.